Spence Launches The OpEd Project

With her pen poised and an easel of blank white paper behind her, OpEd Project moderator Courtney Martin had a few questions for the dozen-plus Upper School students who gathered on a recent Saturday morning.

“Evidenced-based, value-driven argument—what comes to mind when you hear that phrase?” Martin asked. “What does value-driven mean to you?”

“That someone’s inserted their personal opinion or values into their argument,” one student responded. “And that there’s evidence beyond why they think their ideas are correct.”

“It’s also helping to influence others or give knowledge,” another student commented.

The exchange was just part of a special Saturday workshop hosted by Spence history teacher Dr. Sandra Smith and featuring the OpEd Project, an organization fostering stronger opinion and editorial page voices among women.

“My inspiration has been the Spence motto, ‘Not for school but for life we learn,’” Smith explained. “Teachers across disciplines support the girls in finding their own voice. The OpEd Project offers students concrete tools for both claiming their role as a member of the public sphere and articulating their opinion within it.”

An initiative to expand public debate, the OpEd Project targets and trains women experts in all fields to write for the op-ed pages of major print and online forums of public discourse. At present, an estimated 85 percent of all op-ed pieces in the US are submitted by men.

While the OpEd Project has focused on professional and academic women, Smith took the initiative to suggest a seminar targeting juniors and seniors. Spence is the first school nationwide to host this program for Upper School students.

Facilitator Courtney Martin worked both with individuals and the group to encourage students to pare down to core messages, focus on strengths and use facts and numbers to bolster positions. After students refine their work in the coming month, Martin will return to Spence to meet again with the writers and provide concrete support in the op-ed placement process. An author, speaker and blogger, Martin has written widely on social justice and activism and has just published her fifth book, Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors.

Following a morning spent in a free exchange of ideas on the impact an op-ed can have, what constitutes an expert and the difference between being right and being effective, students began looking at hypothetical examples and crafting their own arguments.

“If you give yourself credibility, then more people will give you credibility,” one student offered as the discussion continued.

“If I can’t convey the value of what I know myself,” Martin advised the students. “I won’t be a part of the conversation.”

Martin pointed to the basis for the very formation of the OpEd Project. “There is a deep sense of anxiety about owning what you know in a public way,” she said. “Why write an op-ed? Could you start a revolution? Is that possible?”

“Potentially,” one student said.

“Absolutely,” added another.

This piece was posted on The Spence School website on November 18, 2011. The Mission of The Spence School is to educate girls and young women to the highest academic and personal standards necessary for responsible, effective citizenship and for the successful pursuit of higher education. To check out the full post click here.

The OpEd Project Heads to Providence to Work with the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island

 

Seminar Leader, Zeba Khan, works with staff and board members of both organizations

Investing in thought leadership is an opportunity for universities to be of service to the wider public, says Carina Ray, Fordham Public Voices Fellow

Ravenna, Junior Fellow, here with a real treat today. We’ve been fortunate enough to snag an excerpt from Fordham Public Voices Fellow Carina Ray’s forthcoming article for a special issue of Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, edited by Antoinette Burton. In this piece on writing history for a variety of publics, Carina Ray draws upon her personal experience as a columnist for New African magazine to discuss the challenges she faced writing for a non-academic publication, as well as the racial politics of writing while racially ambiguous for a racially conscious Pan-African magazine.  She concludes the essay by turning to her encounter with The OpEd Project and suggesting that if the humanities are to survive the current economic crisis, which has caused many to question the utility of a liberal arts education, universities need to more actively support the efforts of scholars who are writing for audiences beyond the narrow confines of academia:

Through my involvement as a Public Voices Thought Leader fellow with The OpEd Project, I am part of a cohort of twenty scholars at Fordham University who are actively engaged in finding concrete ways of ensuring that our knowledge and expertise are of public value.  Designed to increase the number of women in thought leadership, The OpEd Project measures its success, in part, by the number of women who appear on the op-ed pages of local, national, and international newspapers and other leading thought forums.[i]  My first OpEd Project thought piece, entitled “Gaddafi and the Mercenary Myth,” appeared on the Huffington Post and debunked the idea that Gadaffi had unleashed black African mercenaries to put down the Libyan rebellion.  I argued that despite being a largely bogus claim, the mercenary myth gained traction with many ordinary Libyans because “it tapped into the smoldering resentment that many Libyans harbored against Gaddafi’s gradual shift away form the Arab world in favor of Africa.”[ii]  On-line forums, like the Huffington Post, with their barely mediated comment boards can be a tough place to write for, but they do reach a very wide audience.

I do not see myself becoming a regular blogger for the Huffington Post, but I am thrilled to be part of a wider movement, through The OpEd Project, that is changing the face of thought leadership, and in turn, diversifying the kinds of public conversations that are happening in the world today.  The 2011-2012 academic year marks the beginning of The OpEd Project’s Public Voices Fellowship Program with four universities: Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and Fordham. While Fordham already recognizes public writing in annual performance and merit increase evaluations, its enthusiastic response to this initiative suggests to me that it views public thought leadership as an area of faculty development worth investing in not simply because it raises the profile of the university, but because the university has a responsibility to be of service to the wider public.  As this program grows so too will the number of historians, sociologists, legal and literary scholars, astrophysicists, biologists, anthropologists, and linguists, among others, who are intervening in and shaping the most crucial conversations of our time.  It is my hope that as this happens more academic institutions will attune themselves to the importance of writing for diverse publics.  It is not enough to simply tolerate scholars who choose to speak to audiences far beyond the confines of the academy.  Universities need to actively support these kinds of efforts if institutions of higher learning, and most especially the Humanities, are to remain relevant amidst the tumultuous economic upheavals that have led many to question the utility of a liberal arts education.[iii]

[i] http://www.theopedproject.org/

[ii] Carina Ray, “Gaddafi and the Mercenary Myth,” The Huffington Post, 27 September 2011,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carina-ray/gaddafi-mercenaries_b_983506.html.

[iii] See for example, Scott Carlson, “At Conference for College Presidents, Concern About the Future of the Liberal Arts,”The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 January 2011, http://www.thechronicle.info/article/At-Conference-for-College/125810/.

Who Are We? They Byline Survey November 17, 2011

Hello everyone.  This week, I (Taryn) am happy to be able to give you a sneak peek into our very exciting “Who We Are” survey, which aims to better understand who The OpEd Project alumni are and what they’ve been writing about.  Below are the response summaries of a variety of questions regarding the demographics and op-ed writing activities of OEP seminar participants.

At this point I am limited in what information I can cull from the responses because the survey is not completed.  This is but a peek for both you and I, but a worthwhile one nonetheless.

* The survey utilizes a random sample of nearly 3000 seminar participants.  We assume that people who have maintained contact with OEP or who have successfully published op-eds are more likely to respond than others.  Our response rate runs from 1 in 6 to 1 in 7, depending upon the length of time that has passed from the time the alumna took the seminar.

Flashback to the OpEd Project’s Oct. 1st Chicago Seminar

What exactly can you expect from an OEP seminar? Take a sneak peek.

Fall Firsts

Hey all! Anaam reporting in with the success highlights for the week of November 15th.

Over the weekend, Marielle Anzelone published an op-ed in the New York Times, which takes us on a beautiful journey through the picturesque landscape of Fall in NY.  The op-ed “Green Fades, Ambers and Golds Radiate” also featured a stunning video accompaniment. Click Here to read and watch Marielle’s  Latest installment in her Column.

Marielle Anzelone published her first Op-Art titled “When New York City Bloomed” back in March which was featured in the New York Times Sunday paper. Her article  received an amazing response and Marielle was asked to write a 13 week column for the paper to share her expertise on the changing seasons. Marielle’s op-ed have marked many firsts for the OpEd Project. Marielle’s efforts are truly inspiring and show us how everyone has something to share about his or her level of expertise.

About two weeks ago, Michele Elam landed a spot on CNN.com with her piece “How art propels Occupy Wall Street.” Since then over 18 million viewers have read her article. Also, Michele recently published another amazing op-ed with the Huffington Post titled “Why Black Firsts Matter.” This compelling piece explores why new social movements mark the beginning of different era. Michele states that is important to mark social “firsts” because they are the vehicle that provide the momentum of change. Congratulations on this phenomenal success!

Last but not least, I would like to give a shout out to Michele Weldon for op-ed “Keeping Predators away from Young Athletes.” Soon after,Michele was asked to appear on WPR radio to discuss ways to keep predators away from young athletes in light of the sexual abuse allegations at Pennsylvania State University. Click here to hear Michele’s WPR radio session.

Michele was also mentioned in a blog post on Slate for her book “Everyman News: The Changing American Front Page” (2007). The article “Are Front-Page Editorials on the Rise” by David Haglund highlights Weldon’s research on how more op-eds are beginning to be featured on the front page. The blog post highlights how op-eds are becoming an essential part of news reporting because they provide a deeper analysis. David notes Michele’s point that newspapers seem more likely to run editorials on the front page when editors are confident their opinions will be shared by most readers.

On a final note, I would like  to congratulate the OEP team for many fall firsts! I can only wait to see what winter has in store.

If it’s not YOUR explanation, it will be somebody else’s

Two weeks ago I, Ravenna, Junior Fellow, devoted my post to a flurry of firsts. This week, we at The OpEd Project doff our hats to second successes.

Congrats to Michele Elam of the Stanford Program who has published her SECOND op-ed in the span of 10 days! Her first article, “How art propels Occupy Wall Street” appeared on CNN.Opinion on October 31st.  On November 9th the Huffington Post ran a second article by Elam: “Why Black Firsts Matter,”  about the importance of celebrating “African American Firsts.” In it Elam argues that we need to recognize these inaugural moments so that we “don’t take for granted that such cracks in the status quo happen inevitably or easily.” A great article!

Also on her second published op-ed in as many weeks is Yale Fellow Meg Urry, the Israel Munson professor of physics and astronomy, whose most recent piece “Earth’s close encounter with an asteroid,”  appeared on CNN.Opinion just 9 days after her October article on the ROSAT satellite which recently tumbled to earth.  This is, of course, not Meg’s second op-ed ever but one of many she’s written since March. Bravo to her efforts to make the world of astrophysics accessible to those of us whose understandings of “potentially hazardous objects” in space have been heretofore dependent on movies like “Armageddon” (1998) or “Deep Impact” (1998) (shameful, I know).

Meg’s dedication to writing pieces about hard science that non-scientist can understand reminds me of my favorite radio program: Radiolab. This phenomenally entertaining and educational WNYC production is hosted by Robert Krulwich and 2011 MacArthur Fellow, Jad Abumrad and its goal is to weave together “stories and science into sound and music-rich documentaries.”

I’m an English major and I’m totally addicted.

One episode in particular speaks to what Meg Urry is doing so well. In 2008 Robert Krulwich was the commencement speaker at the California Institute of Technology, and his commencement address emphasized the importance of storytelling in science. In his speech Krulwich encouraged the graduates to talk about their work with people who aren’t scientifically literate. Instead of thinking “‘There’s no way I can talk about my science with this guy, cause I don’t have the talent, I don’t have the words, I don’t have the patience to do it. It’s too hard. And anyway what’s the point?’” Krulwich told them that attempting to convey scientific material to non-scientists is the only way “to compete with other stories about how the universe works and how the universe came to be.“ These alternative stories could be found anywhere from the bible to a movie screen. Listen to the podcast if you have time. Or read this transcript here.

If you don’t have time, then at least read to the end of this blog post. To all you brilliant academics who have so much information that you aren’t sharing because you think it will be misinterpreted, or lay people won’t know enough to appreciate the nuances of your argument, or the mainstream media form is too short, or too trite, or too fast-paced to do justice to real knowledge, know this: there are so many people out there who may not publish in academic journals and may not know the meaning of the words “quark,” “step function” or “trochee” but who are curious about the world and who are looking for explanations. They open newspapers to find them. And they will. Here’s the thing: if it’s not your explanation, it will be somebody else’s.

Hidden Numbers: The Byline Survey (November 3 – 9, 2011)

Hello readers, this is Taryn bringing you the sixth installment of the Byline Survey 2.0.  One of the most interesting sets of figures that I’ve run into during the course of this survey arises when we make the distinction between staff op-eds and op-eds by contributors.  Controlling for op-eds by columnists allows us to paint a more detailed picture of who is getting heard.

As you can see in the graph below, in three of the four* traditional media outlets that I documented this week, the female staff composed a higher percentage of all op-eds written by women than male staff composed of all op-eds by men. In the Washington Post, for example, women staff columnists wrote 5 of the 6 op-eds written by a woman.  Of the Post’s 13 non-staff articles only 1 was written by a woman.

I find these numbers important for two reasons.  First, they show us how the percentages of woman-authored op-eds are skewed upwards by staff columnists – that the number of woman op-ed contributors is significantly lower than the basic male-to-female ratios indicate.  Second, it highlights the importance of having a diverse group of staff columnists because they can provide a substantial boost in the representation of women and minorities.

At the moment, in each of the traditional media outlets we are examining, the staff is overwhelmingly male.

• Wall St Journal: 30% (3 of 10) 
• NY Times:  22 % (2 of 9)
• Washington Post:  18% (2 of 11)
• LA Times:  33% (2 of 6)

* We would expect the LA Times to follow suit if this were a typical week, but Meghan Daum did not publish her weekly column.  If Daum had published, staff columnists would have made up 33% of all op-eds by women, which, like the other three papers, would be a higher percentage than that of men.

Finally, the graph below contains this week’s percentages of op-eds by women.

We Gathered to Occupy the Op-Eds, One Block from Occupy DC

The OpEd Project group in DC does "Jazz Hands"

Pang Houa and Nikita address their critics in "That's Ridiculous!"

Elizabeth and Sarah deep in conversation at the happy hour at swanky 14K Restaurant & Lounge

Alum Ambassador and recently published opinionist, Colleen (left), speaks to Helen at the happy hour

Rainy Day Voices in LA

Angelenos tend to hide in their homes whenever any sort of precipitation threatens our “72 and sunny” forecast, but The OpEd Project wasn’t going to let morning showers rain on our empowerment parade. We had an awesome group of women and one amazing man (shout-out to Fred Kramer!) plus rock star seminar leader and OpEd founder, Katie Orenstein – so it’s not surprising that by midday, opinions were forming and the sun was shining.

Tasha & Lisa breaking down the argument.

Shaheen & Kristen get into the nitty-gritty.

We even tried a little yoga after lunch to keep our chakras, and our ideas, flowing (sorry, there’s no picture evidence). Then we dived into the second part of the day, finished strong, smiled for the camera and headed to the gorgeous Avalon Hotel.

Fred, Emily, Shaheen, & Kim take on "Stepford is Us."

Changing the conversation goes better with popcorn, just ask Michaela & Michelle.

The whole crew smiling by the inspiring Suffrage Wall at Ms. Magazine

OEP Alums Tabby Biddle, Ruth Bettelheim and Lilli Cloud joined us for a lovely cocktail in the cozy poolside cabana — the perfect ending to a refreshing Sunday in LA!

Becca, Ruth & Kristen in the OEP cabana